Introducing affordable and experimental ideas of living with flowers and plants weekly. I live in the city of Chicago. The long gray brutally cold weather doesn't help my home being lively and cheerful. One solution is to display flowers and plants in the house, however often times they are very pricey. I will purchase flowers and plants weekly under $10 to dress up my house creatively.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

013: Gardening Season Begins

FINALLY!!! The gardening season has arrived after months and months of cold grey winter. This week, I didn't do $10 arrangement but I went to my favorite nursery called The Growing Place in Aurora, a far west suburb of Chicago, to get some plants to fill up my dead terrace. The weather was wonderful and my son had an awesome time with his grandma walking around a beautiful garden while his mama being busy shopping.

I had been buying a lot of perennials since we moved into our current place in the city, which has a good size terrace with planters along the edge so that the flowers would come back every year. But after trying this for several years and not being completely successful each year because the winter here is way too brutal for any plants in planters, I basically gave up on adding more perennials and went with all annuals. I was ignorant enough not knowing that even though perennials come back each year, their blooming period is very short and you cannot enjoy them for a long time. On the other hand, annuals are obviously not coming back next season, but they tend to have a longer blooming period and a lot of them bloom all summer long. So this year, I decided to add more annuals to my "garden".

I wanted to get Rananculas every season but never got one because it's an annual flower, so I grabbed a yellow one first even though it is a spring flower and won't last incredibly long. The reason why I chose yellow was that my mom told me that yellow flowers bring you wealth according to Feng shui;P And I was going crazy going back and forth in the annual section and got about eight various flowers. Of course I color-coordinated them imagining what goes where. In addition to the planters on the edge of our terrace, I had several pots available this year that contained dead plants, and choosing the flowers for them was basically the same procedure as making bouquets.

The last item that I got was a bush of roses. For a long time, I wanted to try growing roses but was hesitant to do it because it seemed like so much work and didn't think it would grow in a pot or a planter. But I re-read an old magazine I got a long time ago that had some articles about growing different types of roses and they encouraged me to get one. I was going to get a pot of English roses because one of the articles said it can be grown in a pot fairly easily. As I was about to get it, I decided to ask a shop clerk there for her opinion. She told me that English roses are very fragrant but only bloom once during the season, whereas spray roses bloom all season long. She actually grew one herself once in a pot and was very easy and enjoyed it a lot. So I went with spray roses.

I planted everything and now I can't wait to see everything settles and grows bigger. I love cut flowers a lot but I also LOVE planted flowers. They have a different kind of enjoyment. They change everyday and grow more beautiful over time. Also, you can enjoy some of them as cut flowers as well. I am hoping that I can add them to my WFT arrangement sometime! If you are hesitant to grow flowers or plants in your garden, please try it. I love to garden because it makes me forget everything that's bothering me while I'm touching the plants and it works as a true therapy for me.